


Captured by a Two-Faced Prince

by KodaOfHeart



Series: Sourblood [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia, Alternia-Focused, Enemies to Friends, First Meetings, Genderfluid Character, Hemophobia, Hemospectrum, Limebloods, Other, Prison, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 14:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KodaOfHeart/pseuds/KodaOfHeart
Summary: Solern has been running and hiding their whole life. If anyone finds out their blood color, they'll be killed on the spot, no questions asked. That's the law for how limebloods like themselves must be treated.So why aren't they dead yet after being captured and delivered to a violet-blooded prince?





	Captured by a Two-Faced Prince

**Author's Note:**

> Another story with my OC's, this time with two of my fantrolls. Set on Alternia right before before Sgrub happened. One divergence of this story leads to Solern getting inserted into canon meteorstuck, while another is them having a game of their own. Either way, their story starts here
> 
> The violence is brief I promise
> 
> Made up my own limeblood lore because canon includes basically none
> 
> Solern is genderfluid, when their pronouns change it's put in bold
> 
> I'm @ClownDefeated on Twitter, hope you enjoy, let me know what you thought! And don't be afraid to ask more about these characters I love em to death

The travelling circus has come to town, and Solern's first mistake was going to attend it. Like the other inhabitants of the small town **they** were hiding out in, they found themselves drawn to the lights and music of the fair which had set up shop nearby. Solern had figured that they deserve a day to do something fun and be among some other people for a change. While their way of living was safe, it was lonely as hell. Maybe they have a chance of meeting somebody here.

**He** uses his invisibility to sneak in without paying admission, since he never has any money on him. He’s used to breaking the rules to stay alive, and occasionally have a bit of fun. However, he quickly finds that he isn’t able to keep using the ability, as the place is crowded enough that he’s likely to bump into a lot of people, and the event is held outside where there’s no walls or ceilings to stick to. So behind an empty booth, Solern turns visible again, and hesitantly walks through the crowds.

The carnival is alight with energy. While purplebloods seem to be running the show, trolls of every caste wander the grounds freely. There’s stands advertising various foods, games, and shows. Solern looks around and immediately notices some highblooded security scattered around, some looking more obviously armed than others. Even some seadwellers stand about smugly, gold-plated weapons in hand, like they own the place. They probably do. So Solern raises his hood to provide some sort of anonymity, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and tries to not worry about the guards as he explores. It's difficult for the anxiety to ease away, but he knows that he needs to act casual, since looking paranoid might draw unwanted attention. Before he knows it, though, he's distracted by the rainbows of lights and sounds all around him. For once, he stops worrying about being found out. That was his next mistake.

Solern can’t afford anything from the stalls and can’t sneak anything away without the risk of being spotted, so he opts for watching other trolls play the games, and attending the free shows. He first happens upon a freakshow, where mutated trolls sit alive in cages or dead in tubes of preservation slime. Such “freaks” include some winged trolls, ones with no horns or way too many horns, and some other deformed creatures such as lusii and various beasts. Solern feels sick to his stomach looking at the treatment of these poor beings, and wonders how the mutated trolls made it past the trials as wrigglers. They must have gotten lucky like he had. Not so lucky now. He quickly leaves the scene, moving on to see what else this circus has in store.

He then comes across a performance, where a pretty violetblooded girl bends her body in various ways. According to the sign beside her stage, she's called Ollie, and she’s a contortionist. Solern watches in amazement as she bends backwards, curling her back so that her head and arms can rest on the ground between her legs. It’s an impressive trick, and Solern claps along with the rest of the audience. Solern spots another troll on the side of the stage, watching the clown with adoration. Based on this troll’s clothes and horns, she’s a rustblood, and based on her expression, she's horns over heels. Solern wonders how she can see the performance, since the her hair hangs in front of her face, covering her eyes completely. He briefly wonders if someone will ever look at him like that.

The snickering from a group of guards nearby snap Solern out of his thoughts. They seem to be looking at him, laughing and talking to each other. They don’t look older than 8 sweeps, but Solern knows better than to mess with them. Yeah, maybe it’s not that safe enough here. Time to leave.

Solern has to pass them to get out of the audience, however, and tries to just get it over with quickly so that he can get the hell out of here. He walks casually, trying not to cause suspicion. As he approaches, their violet and purple voices come into view, and he can overhear them saying something about how he doesn’t wear his color like most trolls do. He catches them debating over what caste he might belong to, citing offensive stereotypes as their evidence. Solern does his best to ignore them and just keep moving.

They, however, don’t want to be ignored. One of them holds out the sharp end of her weapon partially in Solern’s path. He tries to avoid it, even bumping into some other trolls to squeeze past, but the highblood thrusts the sword out so that it catches into Solern’s arm. The shirt and skin slice open with ease, giving the guards a good look at the illegal blood immediately starting to pour from the gash. Their laughing stops and their eyes go wide, taking only a moment of shocked hesitation to break out into shouts and fury. The moment that Solern felt the blade, he clasped a hand over the wound and broke into a sprint, knowing it’s already over for him. Solern starts running, turning invisible and not caring because everyone’s already looking anyway (god I’m so fucked right now), but only gets a few steps before several guards tackle him to the ground. He puts up a fight, kicking, clawing, and biting at everything he can reach. But it’s one unarmed troll against almost a dozen highblooded guards with weapons. He doesn't stand a chance. Every chaotic second that passes he expects to be his last moment alive, but is surprised in each second to find himself still breathing.

He feels each of his limbs pinned down one by one, turning his defensive thrashing into pathetic squirming. His eyes shoot open and see the beautiful and alluring lights of the carnival as a backdrop to the large baton one of the guards is holding, right before it comes down hard on his head, knocking him out cold.

Hours later, Solern awakens, still somehow alive. The first thing he notices is his head throbbing in agonizing pain. He strains to open his eyes, but when he does just sees darkness. He briefly wonders if he was blinded, but then he sees pinpricks of lights, and realizes that there’s a bag over his head. Slowly, he also becomes aware of a bag over his hands, which are bound by their wrists and attached to his waist, as well as chains around his ankles to prevent running. He feels that he’s being held by his arms and dragged somewhere.

Instantly, the fighting reflex comes back. He thrashes once and gains his footing, planting his feet into the ground and trying to run in the opposite direction. It’s no use, though, with all his restraints. While he does catch his handlers off guard causing them to drop him, he doesn’t go any further than the ground. Solern finds himself lifted back to his knees by his chains, someone barking at him to start walking. The order was shouted in a violet voice. Such an evil color.

Solern refuses to cooperate, kicking and hissing, flashing in and out of visibility in a desperate panic as **she**’s dragged into the throne room.

She thinks about how embarrassing this capture was for her. She had thought she could relax for one moment of her cursed life, and would now face the consequences of believing in such stupid fantasies. She regrets attending the dumb fair, regrets not leaving sooner, wishes she could've fought back harder. She had never been a good fighter, hence why hiding was more her style. I’ve lasted long enough, I guess. More than lots of others like me. But I was fucking delusional if I thought I’d be able to keep this up for much longer.

The guards and her walked a small distance, but it took a while since every step brought shots of pain through her body. But finally they arrived at their destination, and she was thrown onto her knees. She could only growl, as she was being held by guards with poles around her neck that prevented her from moving even a hair in any direction. Solern has grown tired of fighting, of hiding, of living in the shadows. A small part of her is grateful that it's about to be over. Still, she thrashed. I am without a doubt going to be culled today, in fact it’s a miracle I was able to survive past being spotted, but I am not going down without a fight. I’m not laying down my life. They’ll have to take it from me.

“_And what have you brought me today, fellas?_” a violet voice booms from in front of her. She can hear the slight joy in it.

One of the guards grabs the bag on her head and rips it away, yanking some of her hair along with it. Solern hisses again, against both the sting on her scalp and the sudden light in her eyes. She squints and looks around. When her eyes adjust, she finds herself in a very brightly lit throne room, highlighted by a violet carpet with gold trimmings running along the floor. Solern follows the carpet with her eyes, and finds that it leads to a large golden throne, upon which sits a highblood, probably a prince of some sort. He has long, slick hair, and is wearing the most obnoxiously fancy attire he could find. Gold jewelry decorates his horns, neck, and fins to show off his wealth. He’d probably be attractive if it wasn’t for his, well, everything else.

When the prince sees the figure writhing before him, he makes a disgusted face. He sees that she has curly hair that’s pulled into a messy ponytail, a gray hoodie with tears in some places, and dark gray pants that are also tattered. Her other noticeable feature is her own blood smeared across her face and staining her clothes - colored bright green. A limeblood. The prince makes a show of gagging at this sight.

“Oh my-! What is this filth doing in here? It looks worse than what my lusus uses as toothpicks.”

Solern gathers all of anger into a single glare, locked on the boy. He looks younger than she expected. God, he doesn’t even look any older than me. Imagine being that young and still that much responsible for the near extinction of my caste?

The guards chuckle, and the prince bounces off of his throne. He takes very slow strides to the limeblood, his shiny black shoes clacking on the hard floor. He wants to grab her chin to make her look at him, but judging by the royal hues dripping from her lips, she’s a biter. So he settles for grabbing her hair and yanking her head back so she can look straight up into his eyes. Hers are orange, she’s still young, but the first flecks of green are in there; he can see them as he towers over her. His also only have a few sparkles of violet, which confirms that these two are about the same age. In this situation, however, he seems much older just because of the power displacement.

From this distance, Solern can clearly see a double-tracked scar down his right eye. The eyeball itself looks unharmed, but the skin appears to have taken a fair amount damage from whatever attacked him. Solern wonders if it was another unfortunate troll in the same position she's in now.

“And what can this thing do, do you have any idea?” he asks, flicking his eyes up to address the guards. He’s too good to actually talk to her, and knows she'd probably lie anyway.

“It turns invisible,” one lady perks up.

“Hm,” is all the prince responds with, though his eyes almost show that he’s... impressed? “And you saw that yourselves?” he looks up at the guards now. They nod. Solern has stopped flashing invisibility at this point, as it’s obviously no use, and wonders that this twisted man might abuse her for her powers instead of simply killing her. God, maybe that’s why I’m not dead yet. I’ll end up like other enslaved lowbloods. The thought makes her queasy. She'd rather die than help them, even involuntarily.

The prince drops Solern’s head aggressively. She looks up at him through her eyelashes and sneers, even though her fangs are an empty threat due to all the restraints. Then her gaze drops back to the floor, and, oh, he’s standing close, isn’t he?

As what could be her final act of resistance, she spits a large wad of saliva right onto one of the prince’s polished black shoes. The bright green slime oozes across the toe of the shoe, and Solern smirks at her handiwork. If you think I’m such filth, how ‘bout some of that on you, huh?

The guards gasp, and the prince looks down at his shoe. Repulsion comes first to his expression, then it morphs into a devious smile, and he starts to snicker. The snicker escalates to a chuckle, then a full laugh. The waves of violet crash in Solern’s head, and she decides it’s her least favorite color to have to see right before she dies.

Without a word, the prince reels the violated foot back and kicks Solern _hard_ right in the jaw. She grunts and starts to get knocked back back, but the neck restrictions keep her upright, so on top of the kick she gets whiplash in her neck. Blood splatters from her mouth, and a fang gets flung across the room, drops of lime following its path. She sees stars, and tries to will her mind elsewhere, to some reality where this isn't happening.

The prince’s laughter fades, and he bends down to be face-to-face with the atrocity.

“You’re really going to wish you hadn’t done that, _sourblood_,” he growls with a malicious smirk. The slur stings Solern a small bit, and she tries another spit launch, right onto his stupid fucking face, but now her mouth isn’t working quite right, and the spit dribbles out in a humiliating fashion instead.

He snorts at the attempt, and stands to his full height again, addressing the guards. “Take this abomination to the cellar, where I will make it wish it had acid running through its veins instead of that sour shit. I am going to put on some new shoes, have this pair burned, and then I’ll see to it that this bastard punished accordingly.” While I don’t care much for pronouns, do you really have to call me an it?

The bag is put back over Solern’s head and **they**’re dragged to the basement where cells await them. They’re thrown into one of them, shackles, bag, and all. Once out of the guards' grip, they start to move to get away. But they're met with more kicks in the back and sides by the ruthless, laughing highbloods. Fuck, not the grub scars! They lie there whimpering pathetically as the cell door is slammed shut on them. A pair of footsteps retreat down the hall and up some stairs, and another door further away is closed with a heavy bang. Solern's alone.

They don’t know how long they laid there for, thinking over their life, where they went wrong, what comes next, and why the hell they were still alive. I guess the violet prick wanted to punish me himself for that spit thing. Then probably find a way to use me for my abilities. The spitting scene replays in their head, up until the kick, and they laugh, despite themselves. That WAS glamorous though, getting to hack a loogie onto his sparkly fucking shoes.

The laughter turns to uncontrollable tears streaking down their face, as it sinks in that this truly is the end of it. No matter how long they keep torturing me down here, I’m never getting out of here alive.

The faraway door opens and closes loudly. Steps descend down the stairs, then up the hall, closer to Solern. It’s a single set of footsteps, clacking slowly. The prince.

The steps stop just outside the tiny cell. It’s a small enough cage that the prince could reach Solern no matter how much they’ve pressed their back into the opposite wall. Using that to his advantage, he reaches in and gently pulls the bag from their head. Solern glares at the prince again, but is absolutely not expecting what they see. He looks concerned. Wait, concerned? He’s kneeling down in front of the bars, looking at Solern with such empathy. What in the world is he playing at?

He takes a deep breath. “You’re not going to believe a word I say, but please just listen, okay?” his voice is so soft, almost lilac instead of the harsh royal hue his voice wore before.

Solern just breathes heavily and looks at the prince with confusion. They refuse to speak, and they guess they have no choice but to listen to this asshole. His words would spark any troll’s curiosity, regardless.

“My name is Reglus,” he starts carefully, hand-picking each word. “I am so, so sorry for how I treated you back there. Truly I am. I needed to play the part so that I can come down here and help you. I want to help you.”

'Sorry'? 'Help'? None of these are words that I’ve ever heard violet-colored. But they still can’t bring themselves to say anything yet. The prince seems surprised that the prisoner is actually seeming to listen, and not trying to interject or fight, so he continues.

“I was raised to be like the others, who hate trolls like you. However, I ended up living among some limes and mutants because of some… unsavory circumstances… and I saw the truth. The caste system is senseless!” Hearing this makes Solern’s jaw drop. Reglus chuckles and runs a hand through his hair, no longer meeting Solern’s gaze. “I want to help people like you. So I act- I act like I did in order to control your fate. You avoid immediate culling, and I get to ensure your safety. I want to ensure your safety.”

Solern is still silent, squirming slightly in the restrictions that still bind their wrists, arms, and neck. The pain is almost distracting them from the nonsense that the prince is saying. Almost.

Reglus looks at them with sadness in his eyes. He can’t tell if they believe him, but they aren’t saying anything, so maybe that’s a good sign. He thinks about how uncomfortable Solern’s shackles look, and wonders if they’d let him remove them.

He stands, and sees the limeblood freeze and look at him with big, frightened eyes. It breaks his heart. He removes a key from his pocket and approaches the cell door with it. Right before he inserts it, he pauses. “I’m going to open the door so I can take those restraints off of you, okay? Could you please do me a favor and not attack me while I do this? Please? I promise, I swear on everything that I hold dear, I promise that I will not hurt you.”

The soreness in their jaw and the bloody taste in their mouth makes them think otherwise, so they back up far into the cage. Or at least as far as they can go. Once the door is unlocked and starts to inch open, Solern lunges at the opening, growling, teeth bared. Reglus shuts the door quickly again, stepping back out of range.

He closes his eyes and sighs. “Please, lime. Let me help you, let me build your trust in me. I want you to trust me. Give me some way to show my sincerity,” he pleads.

“Don’t call me that,” Solern finally hisses out, green blood that matches their voice spilling from their lips in the process. Being referred to by their blood color got on their nerves way too much to not to not speak up about it. The prince smiles, and it lacks all of the evilness of his previous ones.

“Ah, so you do talk. My apologies, I never asked for your name. What is your name?” 

“Why would I give you any information about me?” they snarl.

“Then what should I call you?”

“How about you don’t talk to me at all?” Solern tries to grab at the bars, but hisses as the sharp ties dig into their flesh some more.

“What can I get you? What would help?” Reglus asks, ignoring their request for his silence. “A towel for the blood? Bandages? Food, drink? A pillow? Name it. Name it and it's yours.” After another confused expression spreads across Solern’s face, he adds, “I want to prove myself to you.”

Holy shit, never in my most ridiculous of dreams would a highblood say those words to me. Is this even real life? A highblood wanting to prove himself to ME? Ha!

Solern blurts out the first and most obvious answer they can come up with: "Let me go."

The violetblood sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but that's the one thing I can't do. Yet. If you can trust me, and give me time, I have some ideas for how to do just that. But do it in a safe way that won't get us both killed. Okay?" His hand goes up to his throat as he imagines what would happen if he tried to sneak Solern out right now.

Solern frowns, and considers the situation, swishing it around in their mind like one would swish a drink in their mouth at a wine tasting. Anything else, besides freedom? The guy did just have them captured, beaten, and thrown into what's practically a dungeon. Now he seems like he sincerely wants to help. Either way, this guy is an amazing actor. But which face is his real one? That’s the life-or-death question. Well, really, death-or-death in this situation. I guess if I don’t trust him, and I’m wrong, I miss what could be my ticket out of here. But if I trust him, and I’m wrong, I get humiliated on top of everything else he’d do to me.

Humiliation sounds like the lesser evil.

Their gaze falls to their wrists, where the ties are starting to draw more of their cursed blood, and back up at Reglus, hoping he can read their pleading expression. He certainly can, as he smiles with relief and stands again, slipping the key into the lock once more. He hesitates, mutters “We’re both trusting each other here, okay? Both trusting each other.”, and opens the door cautiously. Solern sits still, shaking quite a bit, but not attacking the boy. With the door open and Solern staying still on the ground, Reglus sighs shakily and bends down, retrieving the special cutters from his sylladex. He decides to start with the bands around their throat, since those look the most painful. He slowly raises the cutters to their neck, watching as they close their eyes tightly, a transparent lime tear streaking down as they expose their neck to the weapon. His heart breaks, imagining how terrifying this must be for them. Cold metal presses against their vulnerable skin as the prince wedges the cutters into a good angle, and they feel slight pulling against their throat, and oh god I made a mistake-

Then, relief. Physical, then mental, relief. One tight cord is released, falling to the ground behind them. They don’t open their eyes, but allow themselves a slow exhale of the breath they were holding. One by one, the cords are cut. Once all three restraints around their neck are broken, Reglus moves down to the one binding their wrists to their waist. The only sound in the room is the trolls' breaths, equally shaky. There's another0 binding around their waist where a leash of sorts was attached, and a chain connecting their ankles so they couldn't take more than small steps. Both are carefully cut away.

Reglus had only tried this plan once before, ending with him getting his eye almost clawed out by a mutant, who had escaped and was shot on sight. Their death hurt Reglus more than his own physical injury.

With one cord left to go (the one around Solern’s wrists), Reglus speaks one last warning in a low tone: “Now, on top of my asking you to not attack me, I’m going to also have to ask you not to escape here. No escaping, okay? I don’t know if there’s a sliver of trust for me in you yet, but believe me, believe me when I say this. If you escape, the guards _will_ kill you without hesitation, no matter what I say. I am your only chance of getting out of here safely. Your only chance. I understand you have defensive abilities that you probably think could help you, but trust me, this temple would be impossible for you to sneak around. Trust me. It’s incredibly hard to hide any secrets here.” That last sentence features a small voice crack. “Do you understand?” He looks Solern in the eyes. Violet flecks meet lime flecks, fear meets fear. The prisoner nods.

With one final cut, the last shackle falls away. Solern looks down at their freed wrists and rubs them, grimacing at the pain. They slowly roll their wrists and neck to stretch out the aching joints. Reglus takes the opportunity to quickly back out of the cell, closing and locking the door again. He feels better for giving the prisoner a little less discomfort in their unfortunate spot. Solern cracks all their joints one by one, and Reglus sits on the other side of the bars once more, waiting patiently. After a minute, Solern looks content - or as much as one could be in their situation - so the prince stands up and wipes his hands on a handkerchief from his pocket. 

“I need to go. If I'm down here for too long they'll check on me to make sure you didn't go rogue, and I don't feel like bloodying you up for show. I hope we can work together to get you to somewhere safe, lim- friend. I'll try to make sure that no one else comes down here while I'm gone. But just in case, if it wasn’t already obvious, this needs to be a secret, alright? If they find out about me helping you… let's just say it would probably be a very public culling, with both our heads on the chopping block. We really don't want that to happen, right? I’m going to talk to my consorts about your situation. Or what they need to think it is, at least. I'll return tonight with some food, okay?” He looks down at Solern - who still seems to be processing the whole day behind them - offers a small smile as a parting gift, and turns to leave.

He gets a few steps away, when a voice from behind him gets his attention. He turns back around.

“What did you say?”

“Solern. That’s… my name,” the prisoner responds weakly. Reglus can tell that the name's probably been changed, since limebloods are known to have unusual names, but he doesn't doubt that this is a sign of trust regardless. So he grins, giddy to see his plan working.

“See you tonight, Solern.”


End file.
